Toward a (Re)signification of cultural hybridity: Guji guji and master mason

Drawing on the theories of M. M. Bakhtin and Homi Bhabha, among others, this paper examines the textual discourse of cultural hybridity in two paradigmatic picturebooks, Guji Guji (2003) and Master Mason (2004), published in Taiwan in the first decade of the twenty-first century, with a close look at the socio-political milieu of Taiwan at the turn of the millennium. The story of Guji Guji deals with the dilemma that a hybrid self inevitably comes to face and negotiate and the ambivalences associated with the discourse of culture's in-between, whereas Master Mason pivots on the tension and contestation between the past and the present and views hybridity as a transgressive power to counter, disrupt, or subvert tradition, as well as to bring in a mosaic representation and improvisational negotiation of cultures and ideas. Differing in subject matter and art style, both picturebooks, nevertheless, substantially work to interpret and interrogate the complex and often contentious negotiations and representations of cultural crossings and mixings.